Threads of Life has been involved in an Australian government funded research project on the island of Timor that is coordinated by the World Agroforestry Centre. This work has taken two forms. First, we have been trialing cultivation of indigo with farmers, though harvest and processing of this will be later in the year. Second, we have been working with the University of Western Australia (UWA) to develop the cold-pressed oil business. We facilitated a UWA training in the village last August, when a group of villagers learned how to make cold-pressed virgin coconut oil (VCO), candlenut oil and calophyllum oil. In late March 2016 we were back in the village to develop a business plan for the new community business.

Much of the workshop time was spent discussing questions that shaped the business plan: How many coconuts can be processed each month? Where will the coconuts come from? How can the work hours of each group member be recorded so that everyone gets paid, and so that the end-of-year profits can be shared out according to the effort each person puts in? How many hours work for how many people are estimated for each step of the production process? The answers to these questions were revisited several times as the plan developed.

Working from their estimates and data from the 2015 workshop we worked out that: the VCO production season was May to November; 600 coconuts can be processed per month, but that 4 months would be needed to get up to that scale of production; and that 25 person days of work (about 2 days per member) would process 200 coconuts. We visited a forest honey producer to see how bottling, sealing and labelling were done, and visited local markets to see the competition and set prices. We decided to use a small clear glass 150 ml bottle because there is a supply in the form of recycled vitamin C drink bottles.

Overnight, all this information was put into spreadsheets to calculate profit-and-loss statements and cash-flow, and then brought back to the group as simple summaries that they could understand and make decisions upon. The members decided to pay themselves 2 or 3 months in arrears during the start-up period at the poverty-level wages they currently live on from their agricultural activities. They were willing to do this because they see that cash-flow will be tight at the start but that when the group does its internal profit sharing at the end of the year those wages could double. Trust that any profits would be safe until the end of the year was established with the simplest of bookkeeping systems, and promises that our field staff would photograph these books and have them audited and corrected by our accounting staff.

So far, so good. With production starting in May and marketing in June, we will soon see how much we have all learned together. With a local market then established, we will be looking for Bali-based market partners for the candlenut (kukui) and calophyllum (tamanu) oils.